Posted on 09/12/2002 5:42:42 AM PDT by TLBSHOW
Walrath hanging on until final vote
One day after nearly wresting the Republican nomination for the 24th Congressional District seat from 20-year incumbent Sherwood Boehlert, Dr. David Walrath of Auburn did not concede the race.
"To my knowledge, we don't have final results, and I think we should wait until all the votes are counted," Walrath said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Schoharie County Treasurer William Cherry said he was not ready to concede to fellow Republican Dan Hooker, who was declared the unofficial winner of the state 127th Assembly District primary Tuesday night.
In the congressional race, Walrath, who trailed by 1,348 votes at one point Wednesday morning, said when absentee ballots are counted, it's possible he will be the winner.
Officials at election boards in the 11-county Congressional District said Wednesday that about 1,800 absentee ballots have been turned in by voters. If almost all of them go to Walrath, he would win the Republican nomination, and Boehlert would not be on the November ballot.
Ballots postmarked Sept. 9 and received by next Tuesday may be counted, so the total of absentee ballots is likely to increase slightly this week.
Ordinarily, those absentee ballots would be counted early next week, but a state Supreme Court judge has granted a request from Gov. George Pataki's gubernatorial campaign to impound all paper ballots until further notice, according to Lee Daghlian, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections.
As part of this order, sheriff's departments around the state were ordered to secure ballots "until such time as they are opened."
Pataki's request is not related to the Boehlert-Walrath race, but to Pataki's battle with Thomas Golisano for the Independence Party's gubernatorial nomination. As part of the court order, election boards were ordered Wednesday to report how many Independence Party absentee ballots they are holding, said Sheila Ross, Otsego County's deputy elections commissioner.
Pataki may be trying to keep Golisano off the Independence Party line, fearing that a third-party candidate will help Democrat H. Carl McCall, Ross said.
However, Boehlert's office also contacted the Otsego County Board of Elections on Wednesday to find out how many Republican absentee ballots (about 120) it is holding, she said.
For years, Boehlert, a moderate Republican, seemed unbeatable. Then two years ago, he won just 56 percent of the primary vote against conservative Republican David Vickers of Hamilton. This time, if the current pattern holds when the paper ballots are counted, his share of the primary vote will fall below 52 percent.
Tuesday night, Boehlert attributed the narrowness of his apparent victory to low voter turnout, a misrepresentation of his record by Walrath and a campaign against him by the National Rifle Association and abortion rights foes. He also said Walrath had spent a lot of money on his campaign.
Wednesday morning, Walrath, a surgeon and medical director of the Willard Drug Treatment Center, disputed those claims.
"I'd be lucky if I raised $100,000," Walrath said. "He outspent me 10-to-1, and when a 20-year incumbent has to pull out all the stops and gets this kind of result, something is wrong."
Walrath, a strong proponent of gun-owner rights, said "the NRA did send out a letter of support and the Right to Life people did too."
Wednesday, Boehlert said his position on abortion is "the somber, delicate decision should be made by a woman after consulting her conscience and her doctor, not her congressman."
Boehlert also said he supports the rights of legitimate sportsmen to use their guns, but favors a waiting period on handgun purchases to assure the gun buyer isn't a convicted felon, an illegal alien, a minor or mentally unstable.
"I have Remington Arms right in my district, with 1,200 jobs," Boehlert said, "and I support legitimate gun rights, despite what they've been saying."
Boehlert also called on Walrath to "make a full financial disclosure — something he has not done to this point."
Walrath's deputy campaign manager, Brett Mecum, said, "I think if the election had been two weeks later, we would have won. We hadn't peaked by yesterday.
"We had some problems, things we'll learn from. We had bulk mailings that didn't get to people, and if we'd had just a little more time, we would have done better."
Walrath didn't have much time to get organized because the state Legislature didn't draw new congressional districts to conform to the 2000 census until late spring, Mecum said.
Asked if he will continue in the race, regardless of whether he ultimately loses the Republican nomination, Walrath, the Conservative Party's nominee, said, "One thing I'm not is a quitter. I've met some wonderful people during this campaign, and it's hard to turn away from people like that."
Ultimately, though, he'll weigh his options after the primary results are official and announce his intentions shortly after that, he said.
Also in the race are Green Party nominee Mark Dunau of Hancock and Right to Life nominee Kathleen Peters of Waterloo.
In the state Assembly's 127th District election as of late Wednesday afternoon, only 78 percent of the vote was in and several hundred absentee ballots had yet to be counted, said Cherry, who trails Hooker by fewer than 200 votes.
Wednesday's tally showed Hooker with 2,628 votes, Cherry with 2,431 votes and Greene County Republican Committee Chairman Ed Barber with 2,407.
"I think it's still a wide-open race," Cherry said.
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